Titus Ridge

We went out to look more closely at the progress of the persistent slab problem around Titus Ridge today. Although the buried weak snow is looking better, it's far from healed.

• On shaded aspects where weak (faceted) snow was buried on Dec 5, the facets produced unstable test results
• The slab overlying the weak snow has consolidated and making triggering large collapses or shooting cracks less reliable indicators of instability (we didn't trigger any today despite trying to)
• On sunny slopes, most of the recent snow has bonded well to the dirt or basal ice below, and we found a widespread thin sun crust on the surface

No obvious signs of instability observed

Shady NW-N-NE-E aspects: The snowfall over the past week has consolidated into a cohesive slab on all aspects above 8500' except on wind-stripped NW and W slopes with less than 50cm (1.5 ft) of total snow. In these specific locations, faceting has weakened the entire snowpack and it resembles a generally uncohesive pile of sugar.

• We found unstable test results in three pits at ~9500' on N, NW, and E slopes (ECTP11 or 12)
• Each of these tests failed on weak (faceted) snow buried on Dec. 5
• Recent snowfall has consolidated into a 4F slab from wind loading and warm temperatures sitting atop the weak Dec. 5 layer
• We observed widespread surface hoar this morning that appeared to be lingering in areas protected from the sun and wind this afternoon

Sunny W-SW-S-SE aspects: There has been a similar consolidation of recent snowfall, but most of this is well bonded to either dirt or basal melt-freeze ice. This snow is generally moist and is capped by a thin rain (below 9k') or sun crust (above 9k').